CINCINNATI—Joseph Broderick, MD, a researcher, teacher and clinician in cerebrovascular disease and stroke at the University of Cincinnati (UC), has been appointed as the incoming vice chair and chair-elect of the American Heart Association (AHA) Stroke Council.

Broderick’s appointment is being announced Tuesday, Feb. 8, in Los Angeles, site of the AHA’s International Stroke Conference 2011 Feb. 9-11. He will serve two years (2011–2013) as vice chair of the Stroke Council, then two years (2013­­–2015) as chair.

The Stroke Council, one of 16 scientific councils within the AHA/American Stroke Association (ASA), works to help identify, treat and prevent cerebrovascular disease and rehabilitate those who have it. It also helps publish Stroke, the AHA’s journal on cerebrovascular diseases, awards scholarships and conducts the International Stroke Conference.

Broderick is Albert Barnes Voorheis Chair of Neurology at UC and is a graduate of Xavier University and the UC College of Medicine. He also serves as research director of the UC Neuroscience Institute and was co-founder of the Greater Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky Stroke Team, a group of UC physicians and health professionals dedicated to providing rapid diagnosis and treatment of stroke patients.

"I’m pleased and honored to take on this leadership role for stroke, one of the major focus areas within the American Heart Association,” says Broderick. "This appointment is a reflection of the many great accomplishments in stroke research and treatment that have occurred at the University of Cincinnati.”

In the late 1980s and early 1990s, Broderick played a leading role in developing and testing the clot-busting drug t-PA as a treatment for ischemic stroke, which results from blockage of a blood vessel. Broderick is the principal investigator of the ongoing National Institutes of Health (NIH)-funded international acute stroke trial, IMS III, which examines combined therapy using t-PA and clot-retrieval devices, as well as the Familial Intracranial Aneurysm (FIA) Study, an NIH-funded international collaborative research effort which examines genetic and other environmental risk factors for intracranial aneurysm.

UC faculty, residents and medical students have 52 abstract presentations, invited seminars or posters being presented at ISC 2011, a forum for scientific work related to cerebrovascular disease.